


Between Chaos and a Dream.

by fearless_seas



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, French History RPF, French Revolution RPF
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 13:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10832181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearless_seas/pseuds/fearless_seas
Summary: Saint-Just has only moments before fate with the soldiers of the National Convention and he lost Robespierre in the chaos.





	Between Chaos and a Dream.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sunshineapollo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshineapollo/gifts).



> I wrote this about a week and a half ago but it was supposed to come out in two weeks after my Jamilton fic finished out... but I decided since it is Robespierre's birthday I should do it today.

**9 Thermidor || July 27th, 1794**

 

____________________

 

          They were trapped somewhere between chaos and a dream. Louis Antoine Saint-Just caught the scent of gunpowder floating in the atmosphere and the irreproachable haze of apocalypse spreading like thick famine. Sweat matted hair down to the corners of his forehead, his sleeves were tucked up to his elbows as he shuddered the inky darkness into his lungs allowing it to paint the inside of the organ like charred wood. Stoic in his manner but lost in his own head, a stranger shoulder collided with his chest, pushing him back and he faltered, swallowing a lump in the back of his throat.

_Where is Robespierre?_

          He turned his head, the rushing crowd pulsating, vibrating and his brain swelled, blinking rapidly-- _desperately_.

_How could I have lost Robespierre?_

          His hands remained calmly at his sides, pivoting his feet, searching for him and seeking for the individual who could give him closure.

_Maxime is gone._

          Saint-Just’s chest panted and he curled his fingers into a fist, wishing exhaustingly to raise both hands to his ears and block out all the noise. Take away what was disturbing him and his heart roared in a way he secretly was so fearful of. His cheeks twitched and he fell to the outskirts of the room; _any second now_. Any second now and the troops of the national convention would break down the door; it had all rushed so fast, _what was Maxime even wearing?_

          The crowd was unfolding, driving and pressing up against one another; the anxiety swelled in his ribs, cracking, threatening to implode. His breathing became labored. Stepping in a full crowd he could always find his one. _You’re supposed to get lost in libraries, in your travels, in the wonders inside your head not breading chaos like a lame beast waiting to bite._ Spirit was coiling deep within his bones and the bright flames from the flickering candles on the walls blinded his perception. Frantic and exuberant, _it would all be over in just a few minutes._

_I cannot find Maxime._

          Antoine could only picture him, his coppery-brown hair flowing down his back in his slender frame, such a stranger thing to bear witness to. Whipping his neck back and forth, beginning to race his fervent eyes around the room, from the barricaded room and the scratch of loading pistols, of farewells scratched out in ink quills to parchment. He had counted a trio gun shots from that very room so far and the gathering smoke was growing so nauseating he clapped a hand over his mouth and pressed his eyes shut attempting to suppress the anguish. It almost felt as a childish dream and he’d wake up in a cold sweat, salty tears glistening down his cheeks. The scent of associates he had only recently seen: deceased, thick, putrid the mixture of blood and corpses clinging to the air, thirsty like fog. He tore his glance over the fostering crowd and the ringing shouts towards the windows, _such a high jump from the top_. He wondered what it felt like to fly for so few a seconds, regarding only if it was worth it. He almost crossed the room in his brashness to join others whose foot had left the ledge. 

          His heart tore him back, roping stones to his feet, scolding him.

    _I have to find Maxime._

          Antoine began to panic, throwing a hand to his golden hair that shimmered in the sway of candle wax, tugging slightly on the strands, rooting and retreading his fingernails into the fibers scraping his scalp. He forced himself to move, petrified and stalled as if he was also to full of air to breathe--he needed to inhale. Not one face in that crowd matching that sallow, short complexion, that oval face or sharp nose or piercing basil eyes he’d spent so long gazing into like his own little world. There were only second left, seconds and he would be another body in a grave full of faceless names without identity and never being seen in the underneath. The national razor’s shine gleaming against the window panes and across the glass of oak lit flames.

_Would I die and never see Maxime again?_

          He trailed himself to the other side of the people, propulsing past them, almost tripping over his own feet and the disillusioned elbows that thrust into his breast caused him to choke on the taste of his own blood. Antoine never meant to quietly depend on this man because he promised he would not lead himself on to such impure thoughts. His heart beating viciously in that cage of his ribs timed perfectly to the truth; maybe he now needed him in the way the ground needs the sun to meet another day. They would find Maxime first, the troops will take them both to separate cells in parted locations, places where they would never meet their faces again.

          No strength, nothing left and he passed another glimpse in the direction to where they had last been collected. Would the last thing he’d ever of seen of him be the dead-set glare that fluttered across his narrowed eyes like a death sentence, those thin eyebrows meeting at the center of his forehead in stress, wiping a hand over his unblinking eyelids and pushing the gun power into the pistol. _It looked so large in his hands,_ Antoine kept this to himself and their fingertips brushed as he had set down the tuning stick to the table. That tiny brush spread up his arms and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. That suffering mediating between his brows preventing him from glaring any which way divergent.

          A gunshot had launched Antoine’s wide-eyed attention to his right and they both had jumped apart, cold now replaced the brief touch against his skin. Le Bas, sprawled on the floor on his stomach, blood leaking from the wound, flowing like a crimson sea on the wooden floor boards. He died with his eyes closed to the chaos that was dancing around him. Saint-Just couldn't tear his watch from the body whom he'd spoken to only moments ago, frozen to his place. He thought of Elisabeth Le Bas, their six week old son; now without a father. His gut flipped, bile rising in his throat. 

          _**How can you be so calm, Antoine?**_

          _Outward appearances are deceiving._

_**Who are you thinking of, Antoine?**_

_None of your concern._

_**How are you so fine with this all, Antoine?**_

_I'm not._

_**How can you be so fearless, Antoine?**_

          _I'm fucking terrified._

          That fear reached its cold finger down his throat and scratched his heart. 

          The twenty-six year old could choose between learning to blend in the wildfire around him, to become it or  fall in love with its warmth, living among it, separate from its vehement attractions. Death hung suffocatingly in the air, he breathed tiny sips to avoid contamination, many trampled, few jumped from the ledge and some like La Bas, shut their eyes and squeezed the trigger, falling to their knees in soakings of their own self. He was attempting to find Maximilien’s hand in the darkness and the desolation. His collarbone glistened with sweat, he was growing to weary and reached out a palm, pressing against the wall, remaining stoic in the face of so many tattered dreams, internally feeling his abdomen shed to ember, infecting his lungs, cracking his ribs, clouding his lungs, billowing up his throat. He gagged and felt his stomach heave again, bile which he struggled to hold down.

          The barricade shattered, the doors and furniture crumbling to the ground, a thousand boots against the wood floors beating in rhythm, pulsating like the heart that flowed through his veins to the base of his neck. Reality poisoned the scene and the soldiers weaved their way throughout the crowd. His eyelids grew hefty and his bouche rose to cry out over the crowd for Maxime but even if he tried his voice would drown in the ocean of vociferate, bullets floating, mixing and cloaking the syllables in the tar of power burns and tearing flesh. He would never see Maxime, he would not ever witness fluttering sage eyes or the tinge of rouge that shaded his cheeks, he would bare calling to none of these items nor the nervous cheek biting Maxime put upon himself.

          A sickly sharp yet gentle voice flew across the air, “Saint-Just!”

          Startled any single voice so carry throughout the commotion he lifted off the wall, following those vocals with his eyes and falling upon _him_. He was there. Maxime stood with his shirt ripped at the shoulders, and Antoine marveled at how peculiar this was to him to see Maximilien Robespierre in such destitute and tatters. Across the room, _he was there_. He was there and he could see him. On shaky footing, he sprinted forward, only to be blocked by others and unable to proceed any further towards his Maxime. He rushed, panic spreading an inferno across his entire body, trying to throw others out of the way--he just needed to feel their olive skin one last time at least. Antoine yearned a tiny brush of their emotion colliding like tides on the sand, he needed frigid fingers pressing into his wrist where it rooted towards his veins and those lifelines that dictated his whole being.

          Saint-Just couldn’t move, closed off by the chaos and shifted away from feeling only just one more touch, muddy locks clouding his sight. At this distance from across the room their eyes met with uncertainty and those pearly green eyes softened, opening the doors to his fervent and delirious soul. His lips were cold as snow, showing winter on the surface of his pasty skin and allowing few to know he held sunshine below. Amber meeting emerald in such a brilliant display of light that those misplaced thoughts that were strung across his conscious were wrapped in their earthy glow, transfixed to where they were not his own any longer and stealing the breath from deep within his lungs--he couldn’t breath. In such a private display his heart undressed, his optics acting like clocks that ceased to spin the moment he stared into them. The universe halted, all things began to breathe each others stillness. This simple lush eternity was all that he needed.

          Robespierre and Saint-Just both stopped, pausing the chaos that had transformed the two of them and stole the paint they had kissed onto each other’s skin.

          Antoine saw nothing but Maxime. Tunnel vision growing steadily shaded as time proceeded further and further; he would give anything to hold this position for an eternity. To grasp those secret glances that were passing between one another. Antoine wished so desperately to cross the crowd, lend his hand and twist their mouths together until they forgot everything but the pattern of each other’s lips on their sheath or the sound of one other’s names falling out in breathy sounds like a waterfall. He longed to know the colors that were painted inside those eyelids at night and have Maxime trace the dimple dented on his cheek bone just below his left eye, take it as his own, branding it by leaving his finger imprints on the section of flesh.

          Saint-Just saw those gaping eyes from across the room and though they could not hold one another, those perilous arms reached forward wrapping their expressive wrists across his body. Maxime was just across the landing and if it was not for the crowd holding him back from letting out his expression he would be there right now. Up on the landing his love was standing, blinking slowly and gleaming in the obscurity of this anarchy, smearing the peculiar radiance in him across his surroundings--Antoine saw nobody else in the world in that moment but him.

          He had lost who he was and knew only that he had memorized how plain everything looked compared to Maxime’s eyes. Everything seemed loss and he could not find a single thing. He was experiencing something so astonishingly beautiful he barely noticed when he was shoved to the side by a fleeing man. Maxime was there. Maxime was there and he could see nothing more. There he was standing in chaos like he belonged, flames and a dangerous wildfire and just across the room was a dream-- _his dream_. His own little dream in the figure of a man exonerated all his very thoughts.

          Maxime’s lips curled as his quivering hands jittered with the glittering pistol in his grasp. A smile before they parted, _Antoine_ , they formed, a whisper to the crowd and meet towards just the two of them. Maxime’s lips formed his name and the full capacity of what he’d truly said settled, reverberated down his spine as if it was the last time he would find himself able to say these words. Antoine swallowed, tears brimmed the corners of his vision and he pressured a sob in the column of his throat, catching the mutual batting to hide the evidence of such sentiment.

          The shine of the pistol was risen, glistering and landing on his temple; hesitation before one last sheepish grin look the place of those tears. His finger hit the trigger.

          “No!” Saint-Just shouted, breathing heavily, anger billowing in his collar bone, as two soldiers came up behind him, wrestling his arms behind his back and throwing him to the ground. There was an appendage ripping on his thumbs and holding him down as he struggled, pushing against them. His cheek was pushed to the floor boards, fist pressing him down, and he kicked, receiving knuckles to his neck and a powerless complex as the two men controlled his body. His gums began to sting at a shot that caught at his mouth. Blood dying his teeth, he sputtered, choking on that metallic taste as it slid down his throat. He couldn’t see anything but boots from his vantage point on the floor, hair strung in front of his eyes--blinding him. He shut himself, heart hammering deadly to burst. 

_“Maxime!”_

          A gunshot echoed throughout the room, vibrating the floorboards and where his cheekbone was pushed into the floor to a bruise, he felt the shaking from the powder shot. The trigger had been tugged and another tumbled to the ground. There was someone who began to scream in the bustling room, some stranger place around him there was nothing but screams and he longed to put hands over his ears and block out all of the noise but it was too much. With his wrist, both battered and held in the center of his back, he kicked around, searching for something to allow him to release from this. His imagination immediately flew, _Maxime’s glowing eyes would never see the light._

          The mysterious screaming was beginning to haunt him and he begged for anything but this. He relinquished back to every time their velvet eyes met and the wrinkles that flurried off Maximilien's when they softened to reveal his true personal, to every time teeth brushed over his pulse or when there were fingers in his hair or when in his height he was forced to lean down and take a sip and drink in those silky, frozen lips that were almost like ice on his own skin. Maybe he could force himself to forget about every night that his shirt slipped over his head and fell to the ground around the bed. Dawns when Maxime was on top of him their bodies moving to the grind of their hips-- _he couldn’t_. He could never forget about these things for in these life moving instants he held his world in the palm of his hand and he wouldn’t of had it any other way.

          Antoine wouldn't allow himself to consign to oblivion every time he traced a touch around Maxime's hips or how distraught he looked in his sleep with his etching eyelids exploring, working even in the moment of supposed peace. Every time the pad of his forefinger rubbed the sleepless bags underneath his heavy, stressing watchings. How late their nights were spent together, studying his visage flickering in the wavering moonlight, drowning the streets in it's aura of simplicity. Waver in the scent of their relationship, their damned connected. Slipping briskly into an intimacy from which he would never recover. 

          From the floor, Antoine hadn’t realized--there was not stranger screaming in the frantic room--it was _him_. That deafening shouts releasing from his own lungs in its capacity like a caged animal. Every inch of him ached for Maxime, his mind hungry, his heart starving and his stomach _ravishing_. His face was pressed into the floor and he tasted salt on his tongue--a mixture of blood, sweat and tears. He had lost Maxime again, catching his eyes only for those few seconds in which chaos met his dreams. He wanted both, he craved the adventure of chasing his imagination. In the ecstasy, Maxime’s pastel eyes bore holes in his soul; he had lost him and his heart was longing, starving for _him_. The fire extinguished inside of himself, no longer having the energy to scream or make a sound he fell into his own demise.

          Stoic he remained, so much easier to act like naught matters than to confess his benevolence was broken from losing someone who had forgotten their own smile. Maxime wasn’t just a dream, he came with the chaos like a hurricane--it was easy now to understand why they were named after people. Saint-Just was displaced, bruises were rising on his surface, and the cut on his lip stung. He shut his eyes, blocking out the noise, not caring that he could still breathe. The salt across his tongue tasted of _him_ and he wallowed in the flavor of a last taste of someone he loved.

           Antoine smothered, throwing that cursed name to the floorboards, never regretting any moment they had spent. He was trapped someplace between chaos and a dream; unable to make a sound except to whisper his name. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, kudos are HIGHLY appreciated! You can always find me on Tumblr @sonofhistory 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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